How do you know the NDP won't gain seats in the next election? Oh and don't worry, we've done coalitions with the liberals before as the dominant party. Lets just say that, well they might disappear over time like in Sask(or merge with the conservatives when they both can't win)

I'm not one to conflate the success of the NDP with the public good. Unlike many on babble, I would take the 2008-11 parliament over the current one any day. Ultimately, I see the Harper Conservatives as too big a threat to simply dismiss the Liberal Party. The Liberals currently take seats from the Conservatives that the NDP could not. I just don't see the NDP as a factor in Shaughnessy, Rosedale, Forest Hill, West Point Grey, Kerrisdale or similar communities across the country.

What the Liberal Party needs is a leader who can keep those areas and start taking other ridings dominated by the educated bourgeoisie back from the Tories. The Don Valley, Thornhill, West Vancouver, North Vancouver, downtown Calgary, etc. are the kinds of places a new Liberal leader needs to play well. Similarly, the Liberals need to become a factor in persistently right-wing mutlicultural communities like suburban Chinese and Jewish Canadians so that Richmond, Thornhill and Markham are back in play.

Ultimately, the Liberal Party failed because Chretien's election finance reform cut its institutional ties to Bay Street. If the Liberals are to put in a credible showing next time, they need a leader drawn from corporate Canada, ideally some finance sector CEO still angrily brooding over the income trust "scandal." If the party has to go with a caucus member, Brison is the only one I can see who can appeal to the right people.

Also, Debater, your defense of Justin Trudeau is weak. I know his former employers, his childhood friends and I have seen his gaffetastic TV and newspaper interviews. The guy doesn't have what it takes both in terms of intellectual capacity and work ethic. And, to his credit, he knows it.

Parts of Western Canada definitely remain a problem, and that remains more difficult. The Liberals are going to have to apologize for their previous misdeeds in that region.

"Parts of Western Canada". A "problem". How delicately put. In SRB in May, the Liberal candidate didn't get north of 700 votes, and was duking it out with the Green candidate in the basement. And outside of Wascana and Winnipeg North, where both MPs rely more on personal vote than the Liberal brand, SRB isn't really that exceptional in the West (excluding BC).* I suppose death and advanced decomposition can be viewed as a problem. If such apologies come out of the mouth of a leader whose background is unapologetically Liberal, Westerners can be forgiven for taking such apologies with a grain of salt.

Alberta Liberal Party? Dying.

Saskatchewan Liberal Party? Dead. They'd be lucky to fill an outhouse in a Regina Royal Canadian Legion hall.

Manitoba Liberal Party? The bailiffs may soon be paying a call.

Face it, the choice facing most Westerners when faced with a Liberal is whether to fire them out of a cannon or run them out of town on a rail.

* Where, incidentally, the Liberal vote, if placed with the NDP, would have elected an NDP MP, instead of someone who, in a battle of wits with a 2 x 4, hefty bets would be placed on the piece of lumber.

Goodale is in his 70s, isn't he? He's in good shape, but that's asking a lot. Plus he speaks zero french.

Rather than flag this as offensive, let me simply point out that we let women, gays, the disabled, and persons of colour run for office these days... why not old folks? Or are they only up to non-elected office, like the Pope?

I didn't say he couldn't run, Unionist. But leading a party is usually a 10-year commitment (especially one in a rebuilding phase), which usually involves an extremely heavy schedule, and one that involves going into Quebec and speaking to people in their mother tongue.

You need to draw a distinction between who *can* run, and who it would be a good idea for that party to elect. Age can be a factor in the latter, though there are exceptions that would prove the rule. Bilingualism is also a factor.

Everybody can try to do everything. Some people will be better suited for it than others, for any number of reasons. This wasn't a thread about the former; it was a thread about the latter.

I'm not one to conflate the success of the NDP with the public good. Unlike many on babble, I would take the 2008-11 parliament over the current one any day. Ultimately, I see the Harper Conservatives as too big a threat to simply dismiss the Liberal Party. The Liberals currently take seats from the Conservatives that the NDP could not. I just don't see the NDP as a factor in Shaughnessy, Rosedale, Forest Hill, West Point Grey, Kerrisdale or similar communities across the country.

What the Liberal Party needs is a leader who can keep those areas and start taking other ridings dominated by the educated bourgeoisie back from the Tories. The Don Valley, Thornhill, West Vancouver, North Vancouver, downtown Calgary, etc. are the kinds of places a new Liberal leader needs to play well. Similarly, the Liberals need to become a factor in persistently right-wing mutlicultural communities like suburban Chinese and Jewish Canadians so that Richmond, Thornhill and Markham are back in play.

I agree with everything you've said, except that what the Liberals need is not only someone who *can* appeal to those folks, but who would decide that it was a good strategy for that party to try.

In last May's election, they basically let the Conservatives off the hook and went after the NDP instead.

StuartACParker wrote:

Ultimately, the Liberal Party failed because Chretien's election finance reform cut its institutional ties to Bay Street. If the Liberals are to put in a credible showing next time, they need a leader drawn from corporate Canada, ideally some finance sector CEO still angrily brooding over the income trust "scandal." If the party has to go with a caucus member, Brison is the only one I can see who can appeal to the right people.

That having been said, in doing so, we should recognize that that kind of Liberal Party would be far more likely to keep the Conservatives in office than to support an NDP minority government. What you'd have to be hoping for is good right-wing vote splits.

My OP was a bit in jest, but if the NDP wants to squeeze out the Liberals as the main party of the center-left, it's a legitimate question. But I did raise some discussion questions:

Quote:

Questions to think about: How much lower does the Liberal vote need to go from an NDP point of view (if at all)? What proportion of the Liberal voters are "progressive" and would seriously consider voting NDP? Which Liberal MPs would switch?

I'm not one to conflate the success of the NDP with the public good. Unlike many on babble, I would take the 2008-11 parliament over the current one any day. Ultimately, I see the Harper Conservatives as too big a threat to simply dismiss the Liberal Party. The Liberals currently take seats from the Conservatives that the NDP could not. I just don't see the NDP as a factor in Shaughnessy, Rosedale, Forest Hill, West Point Grey, Kerrisdale or similar communities across the country.

What the Liberal Party needs is a leader who can keep those areas and start taking other ridings dominated by the educated bourgeoisie back from the Tories. The Don Valley, Thornhill, West Vancouver, North Vancouver, downtown Calgary, etc. are the kinds of places a new Liberal leader needs to play well. Similarly, the Liberals need to become a factor in persistently right-wing mutlicultural communities like suburban Chinese and Jewish Canadians so that Richmond, Thornhill and Markham are back in play.

Indeed. If Ignatieff had not so thoroughly lost his grip over the 905 and even parts of Toronto, we would not have a majority Con government today. The Liberals will never seriously recover in Canada if they don't go after Conservative seats. They spent too much time targeting the NDP in the election and it failed miserably.

Just in case you needed more evidence that the Liberal party is DYING. Look at the latest column by Susan Delacourt hitherto the Liberal apologist extraordinaire in the MSM. if she thinks its all over for the Liberals then you know its really ALL OVER

"Ever since the May 2 rout, many Liberals themselves have been talking about whether the party's over. The first time I heard it was a few days after the election, when a former candidate, someone who has occupied high posts in the party, said bluntly to me that he thought the odds were 50-50 for Liberals to survive. Several months later, it's still not clear to me whether the party is getting its act together or simply, in the parlance of palliative doctors, "getting its affairs in order." Here, to me, are some of the signs the condition could be terminal...."

It would be nice if the Liberals were reduced to seats like St. Paul's, Quadra, maybe Kingston, maybe pickup Don Valley West...oh and they can keep P.E.I.! The NDP needs to finish the job by getting what remains of the Liberals in Quebec as well as their working class holdouts that really ought to be NDP territory like Scarborough-Guildwood, York West, Etobicoke North and Winnipeg North as well as the downtown core seats in Toronto and Vancouver.

Bob Rae visited Saskatoon during the election campaign out of a sense of obligation and to let those few Liberals know that they hadn't been totally abandoned (just mostly). Although making a visit to SRB, where the Liberal eventually garnered less than 700 votes was a curious choice.

Not curious at all. Froma Liberal perspective, one of the purposes of the fraud known as "strategic" voting was to ensure that Conservative - New Democrat marginals like Saskatoon - Rosetown - Biggar go Conservative. Bob's Saskatoon visit may not have been the cause, but if something like half of those Liberal votes had gone NDP . . .

I'd like to see Sask Liberal leader Ryan Bater take over the federal party.

1. He would actually have the Liberal Party run on what they actually believe (ie, they'd run to the right of the Conservatives just like he's running to the right of the Saskatchewan Party).

2. He'd only run the minimum number of candidates to retain official party status (is it 50?).

3. All Liberal Party financial and organizational resources would be redirected to support his own candidacy in a pointless effort to win whatever constituency North Battleford ends up in after the next redistribution.

If I was younger, I think I would get into politics. I would be a Liberal. Right now the Liberals match more what I think and believe than the Conservatives do...I still haven't given up on the income-trust sector. If the Liberals get in, it's in their plank. I would like to save the existing trusts, especially the energy trusts. I converted to the Liberals over the [Tories'] income-trust changes.

He had piles before he sought the Tory leadership. If CCAFT had been turned on to something useful like seizing control of the post-1993 NDP, Orchard would loom pretty large in progressive circles today. CCAFT was a large, highly effective organization that could turn a thousand people out to an event on Orchard's say-so on 48 hours notice. In the pre-internet era, their phone and postering network was incredible.